Don’t have a social media presence without being present

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Yesterday was awesome! I attended 2 great marketing events that I would like to share with you. Awesome was also the word of the day thanks to Scott Stratten from UnMarketing. He was one of the speakers at the FreshThinkers event, alongside Amanda Hite from Talent Revolution, hosted by Jobsite. Scott is one of the best speakers I’ve heard in a long time. As he said himself, he speaks in tweets. Punchy and straight to the point in 140 characters which are easily shared by twitter geeks (like me). As you can see from the image below, the fresthinkers twitter stream reached over 41 802 people. This would not have been possible without a great social media platform such as Twitter. It makes people feel part of an event even if they are thousands of miles away.

I tried not to bore my followers with too much tweeting, but I couldn’t help it. There was just so much good information that I thought needed to be shared. Now I will share my favourite bits with you.

Main Points:

Marketing isn’t a task, it simply is. Marketing is every action and interaction between a company and it’s customers (or potential customers). Every time you engage with someone you are marketing. Treat your staff with respect and value them, they are your greatest (marketing) asset.

There is no such thing as a neutral brand/company interaction. It always either increases or decreases a person/company’s opinion of you.

In the digital world people are more aggressive online than they are offline. If you make a mistake or treat them badly, they are more likely to complain online. And who is listening online? Everyone!!

Stop treating your current clients badly. Marketers often focus too much time and effort wooing new clients whilst forgetting about the exisiting ones. They are the ones making you money right now.

People do business with people they know,like and trust. What does this have to do with B2B you might say. Even if you are selling to a business, it is still made up of people, right? Then stop saying this is not relevant to me. You still have to build up credibility and trust for prospects to choose you over your competitor.

Nobody shares mediocre, boring, ordinary content. People share awesome. Whether it is awesomely good or awesomely bad, they will share it. How often do you produce mediocre content and wonder why noone is reading it or sharing it? Stop it. If you are going to blog, make it relevant, interesting and valuable content. Even if that means you only blog once every 2 weeks instead of every week. Quality over quantity. Que another quote from Scott “Only blog when you have something awesome to say!”

Write content for your audience and not for Google. You don’t have to repeat keywords in every single sentence. Who would want to read that? If your content is relevant it will be indexed, shared and it will be read.

Social media will not fix a bad product or a bad business model. It will only highlight how much it actually sucks. Fix that first says Amanda Hite. So true. Even worse, do not simply open up a social media account and never use it. That is worse than not having one. Nobody likes to be ignored so if you are not willing to reply or talk to your target audience, don’t have a social media presence!

Don’t try to be everywhere. Choose a few social media platforms and build your following from there. If your target audience is not on Facebook or Digg, then why are you focusing your efforts there? Be where your audience is and engage with them there. Let them define the medium. Don’t define it for them.

Social media is talking. It’s a conversation not a selling tool. The benefits (money) will come with time. Time is the biggest investment you’ll have to put into it.

Amanda Hite and Scott Stratten

My copy of Scott’s awesome book

Before I move onto the evening shenanigans, I have to say a big thank you to twitter friend Gary (@garyr0binson) who arranged for me to attend this event. It was great to finally meet him after months of tweeting. What a lovely guy! We shared lots of laughs over cups of coffee (it was an early start) and plenty of fruit. (Yes, we tried to avoid the cake!)

The ‘Tweetup’

For those not familar with this term, it’s basically a networking event where you get to meet the lovely people you have been having conversations with online.

InterfaceFlor hosted one last night during Clerkenwell Design Week. More people were expected to attend, however, it was still a successful evening involving some interesting discussions with the InterfaceFlor marketing team (especially Emma who runs the Twitter account) and fellow tweeters, Marketing Consultant to the AEC Industry, Paul Wilkinson (@eepaul) and Robert, Director of Architectural Practice Studio Klaschka (@studioklaschka) . It was good to finally put a face to a name (or twitter avatar). I am looking forward to attending more of these tweetups and maybe in the future we will be holding one for all our lovely Pauley Creative followers.

Below are some pictures of the evening:

For everyone who thinks social media is not relevant for their business. I leave you with this thought from Scott: “Is your market humans? If yes, they are on social media.”

Have you attended any industry events recently. What have you learned? How often do you attend networking events? Have you deepended online relationships by taking them offline? Leave a comment and let me know.

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About Nick Pauley

Nick Pauley is the founder and managing director of Pauley Creative. Aside from managing the strategic direction of Pauley Creative, Nick is primarily involved in the early planning and marketing direction of each of Pauley Creative’s fabulous clients. Follow Nick on Twitter click here.